While the liberation of the Blue Region had been successful, at least so far, there was still some unrest. Some people opposed the formation of the new council. Some called for the nobles to be freed. Some said that taking away other people’s property and wealth to be shared with the rest set a bad precedent. There was a lot to hash out amongst the locals, especially the more self serving ones.

Word had gotten around quickly about Arwin’s role in the matter and certain people seemed to look at him as a target. As such, on the advice of not just Jacque, but Bleu and Aoi too, Arwin decided that it probably would be better to get out of town for a while, until things stabilized.

He felt bitter, wanting to get to know the girls more and actually experience village life. Still, he was also eager to explore more of this wonderful fantasy world and the Blue Region was only a small part of it. His recent success had restored some of his self confidence and had done wonders to distract him from his recent heartache. He yearned for more. So, he waved goodbye to the others, promising to return, and went south east.

He followed a dirt road marred with wagon wheel ruts and clumps of weed and grass. The forest surrounded him, evergreen trees towering far above him, reminiscent of Earth’s giant douglas firs, but many were even larger. Trunks stood as solid and wide as stone towers, wrapped in crackling brown bark, and the evergreen needles in the branches above were as long as his forearm.

On a whim, he wandered off the road a ways, into the woods, though he tried to keep the road in sight. Looking up into the sky-high reaches of the trees, something strange caught his eye amidst the broken light and organic shapes of the branches. There was something almost uniform there. He stopped and squinted up. Yes, there was something unnatural up there. It had manmade regularity.

As he moved around to get a better look, he spotted similar dark shapes in other places. But they were broken up and inconsistent. Was that a ladder? A bridge? Were those frayed ropes dangling over there? Or was it all just his imagination? Unfortunately, they were just too high and the light too dim to clearly make stuff out. He continued on his way, and immediately tripped over something on the ground.

Picking himself up off the prickly, brown forest floor, Arwin looked back to see what caught his foot. His eyebrows rose in surprise. He’d uncovered a few old, mostly buried and very worn wooden planks. Sweeping off some of the dirt and debris covering them, he could see that they would have been held together with rope at one time. Now they were almost gone from rot. He glanced back upwards. Those really were some kind of manmade bridges or something up above. Perhaps an elaborate tree house. Or tree village, given the size. It looked like it had been a very long time since anyone had used it though.

He continued on, keeping an eye out for anything unusual. Pretty much everything was. He saw two bellhops hopping along through the woods, each bell making a distinctive ring at the top of their bounce. Disturbed by Arwin’s passage, a cat of nine tails jumped out from some bushes, startling him, and then lashed him vigorously with all nine soft and velvety tentacles. Satisfied that justice had been done, the cat then haughtily sauntered a short ways off before sitting down and studying Arwin from a safe vantage point.

Arwin had the odd sensation that the feline giving him the cat scan was cataloguing him, and was maybe on the point of catechizing him, perhaps before realizing that it couldn't speak human. Then the creature vanished once again into the underbrush. Arwin shook his head. He'd certainly been catapulted into a strange world.

Eventually the great evergreen trees thinned and more and more leafy, deciduous types worked their way into the forest. He came to a fork in the road.

Which way should he go? Neither looked more travelled, so taking the less travelled one simply wasn’t an option (sorry, Robert Frost). With nothing to indicate either way was better than the other, he chose at random and ambled off, heading south. It was then that he noticed the sun was just passing its zenith overhead. Also, he heard a growling in his stomach that reminded him that adventuring through the woods builds an appetite and that he hadn’t brought lunch with him, nor had he made plans about spending the night.

“Hmm. It appears that I’m quite the rookie at adventuring,” he chided himself.

But all this swept from his mind in an instant when he turned a corner in the road and saw what lay before him.

It was a skeleton picking his butt! Or, perhaps he — or she, for it is difficult to determine gender from just a skeleton — would be, if s/he had a butt. The figure was down on one hand and both knees, the other limb lodged deep in their backside. The bones were bleached white from the sun, entirely free of flesh and somewhat shone under the clear blue sky.

A male voice grumbled and worked the back hand around rigorously. Well, that cleared the gender up. Probably.

Arwin's eyes widened and he pulled up to the skeleton on the path, only to see the skeleton go into a growling fury while trying to extricate its hand from its backside. "Uh, whoa." Arwin raised his hands mock defensively. “Sorry, is this an inappropriate time?”

The skull twisted around to look up at him from the ground. "Oh, of all the rotten times to be caught with one's pants down,” he grumbled.

Arwin’s jaw dropped. "You can talk!”

The skeleton rolled his head in exasperation. "Ah, you're a simpleton. For a moment I was worried that you might be someone dangerous."

Arwin’s gaze levelled. "And apparently you're rude."

The skeleton let out a whoosh of air. Which was impressive, given that he had no lungs. "Don't just stand there. Give me a hand!" he demanded.

"I think you've already got one." Arwin replied, backing away slowly. "I'll just leave you to whatever it is you're doing. No judgement here. I think people should be allowed total sexual freedom, whatever turns them on, just as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. Well, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone who isn’t asking for it and enjoying it. Because some people are into that whole whips and spanking and the occasional punch-in-the-face thing. Not me, by the way. The punching part, anyway.”

"Oh, don't be a nincompoop,” the skeleton spat. “I don't care what you think I'm doing but this isn't what it looks like. I ran afoul of a troll with a sense of humour who shoved my bones into place like this and now they're stuck. Better than running across an ogre and having them ground into dust, but still, it's rather undignified and the sooner the situation is rectified the sooner I'll stop being the butt of your jokes."

Arwin snickered. "Don't you mean, when the situation is 'rectumfied'?"

The skeleton glared at him.

Arwin shrugged apologetically and pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "I saw a bunch of puns earlier..."

The skeleton shook his head as if he were listening to an idiot.

Arwin smiled. "Oh, come on. Butt of your jokes? You didn't do that on purpose?"

If it was possible, the skeleton's cheeks actually seemed to turn a shade of reddish pink. "All right, enough! I think we've reached the end of this!”

"Or, at least you certainly have." Arwin snickered again.

"Are you going to help me out," the skeleton shouted with frustration, "or stand there laughing at me all day long?"

"Sorry." Arwin hurried forward. After a few seconds of experimentally twisting the arm and hand, he was able to extract the limb from the pelvic bone.

With a sigh of relief, the skeleton stood and stretched. "Ah, much better. That was definitely giving me a kink in the shoulder." He turned and offered his bony hand and Arwin shook it. The grip was firm, the bones smooth and dry. "Thanks for that. Sorry for being so short tempered with you. It was a rather embarrassing and uncomfortable situation to be caught in."

"Don't mention it. What's a hand job between friends?" Arwin tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.

The skeleton's eye sockets narrowed. "Are you always like this?"

"Um, maybe? I could be out of sorts. I’ve never spoken to the undead before. Didn’t even know they were real. That only happens in books and movies where I come from.” Which wasn’t the case here, this was a different reality, unless of course he was, in actuality, crashed in a ditch somewhere just off the highway on Earth and everything he’d gone through up to this point had been happening entirely in his concussed head. He hoped not. That would be super disappointing. Like those movies where someone goes through all this amazing stuff only to wake up at the end of the film and realize that it was all just a dream. The thought that this world might not be real for him really bummed him out.

It’s ok, the author assured him, momentarily breaking the fourth wall or something, that wasn’t the case here.

Arwin relaxed again, pleased.

The skeleton looked puzzled. “Where do you come from? Undead like myself are not exactly commonplace, granted, but everyone knows that undead exist in real life. Er, undeath. I mean— Whatever.”

“I guess it depends on location of your reality.”

"Ah, so you’re from farther away,” the skeleton mused. “You’re from the Knight’s Realm?”

“Nope. No knights where I come from. In fact, I’m pretty sure that chivalry died a long time ago back home. And whatever the female version is. You know, if women have ever had a code of conduct. I wonder if they have?”

“You’re from Pillé, City of Thieves?”

“No. Definitely not. Sounds dangerous. But also exciting. Is that wrong?”

“The Indós Morass?”

“I have no idea what that is. Sounds messy though. Are the girls cute there?”

The skeleton tilted his head. “Hmm. Well, you don’t look like an elf so I doubt it’s the Blood Kingdom. Somewhere in the Heart Kingdom then?”

Arwin’s eyes widened. “There are elves here?”

“Yes, of course. Several different kinds.”

“Dwarves? Naga? Goblins? Gnomes? Fairies?” Arwin excitedly babbled.

“Obviously.”

“Wow. That’s awesome!” Arwin enthused. “And no, I’m not from the Heart Kingdom. I’m really pumped to go there though.” He chuckled. Wordplay was fun.

The skeleton tapped his chin thoughtfully and appraised the human in front of him. "I'm not much on fashion now-a-days, not needing it myself, but come to think of it, your clothes are nothing like what people wear anywhere I've been in Heartstone. You also have an odd accent. Uncouth and boorish, but I suppose the ladies will adore it anyway, simply because it’s foreign and they tend to think that anything foreign is exotic and attractive. Finely cut hair, perfect teeth, strange ignorance of all things Heartstone and you enjoy puns, finding them amusing instead of bothersome. Perhaps you aren't from around here at all."

"That's what I'm saying! Wait.” Arwin looked down at himself: dark green sneakers and fitted gray jeans, a plain white t-shirt he’d gotten from Jacque that showed off his muscular arms. His previous shirt had been ruined in the fighting. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

The skeleton looked around for a moment, puzzled. Then his gaze caught the tall forest behind Arwin. His voice filled with awe. “No. It couldn't be. After all this time, has the Curtain finally opened again?"

“The Curtain?” Arwin asked. "And why did you capitalize it like that when you said it? Also, how do I know that you capitalized it?”

"The Curtain,” the skeleton explained, “is a magical barrier separating Heartstone from the non-magical dimension of Drearia, what you call Earth. You know, I find it really strange that you named your planet after dirt. Anyway, Drearia is where the early primates and then, later, modern humans of Heartstone originated from.”

“Wow. That’s cool.”

“The Curtain is one of several portals to other dimensions found in our world. In the past, the portal was always open, allowing people to venture from Heartstone to Earth and back again, though not that many took advantage of the opportunity to go to Earth because there’s no magic, so why bother? There are far better travel destinations. But the Curtain has been closed for ages. In fact, I heard that the shutdown was supposed to be permanent, in order to protect Heartstone.” He frowned and he continued in a worried tone. “The Curtain is powered by the Heartstone itself. Has something has weakened the power of the Heartstone so that the stone can no longer keep the portal closed? That’s a very troubling thought."

“The Curtain was protecting Heartstone from Earth?”

“Well, yes. No offence.”

“Non taken,” Arwin assured him. “You should see what we’ve done to the place over the last two hundred years. Killed off something like sixty percent of all living things and we’re responsible for the world’s first man-made mass extinction event, losing so many entire species that we’ve lost count. Negatively affected the climate of the entire planet with our pollution and rampant consumerism. Seems like every month that goes by is the new hottest month on record. Polar ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising high enough for islands to disappear. Storms are getting worse. Wild fires are big enough that smoke travels across oceans to other continents. We all live on the edge of ecological disaster. Social inequality is skyrocketing. Pandemics are killing millions and nobody really cares. All kinds of problems.”

The skeleton stared at him with a slack jaw and hollow, unbelieving eyes.

Arwin sighed. “Yeah. I’m guessing that’s why you closed the portal to my world, eh?”

“I had no idea that things were so bad,” the skeleton allowed. “If I recall, the portal was shut because of rising pollution and rapidly advancing war technology.”

“Ah, probably the industrial revolution and all that coal burning. Followed by dynamite and modern warfare. We had two world wars, back to back.”

The skeleton staggered back a half step. “World? You mean, the entire planet at the same time?”

“Sadly, yes. Tens of millions died. The second ended when we dropped a pair of nuclear bombs, each one strong enough to destroy an entire city forever. Not our proudest achievements.” Arwin huffed and changed the subject. “So, Heartstone is a place and a thing?"

The skeleton took a moment to regroup, then nodded. “I can tell by your seemingly limitless ignorance that you really must be from Drearia after all. Yes, both place and thing. The place was named after the thing, you see. The Heartstone thing rests in the centre of the place, this continent. It's a very big stone, that acts like a heart, pumping concentrated magicons, a type of subatomic particle, into the realm. I’m told that magicons exist everywhere already, perhaps even in your universe, but the density of them in Heartstone contributes to our particularly heavy diversity of magical things here. The particles naturally affect both genetics in living creatures and certain physical properties of the inanimate. Buildups of magicons in certain regions are responsible for most of the puns. And magic users can make use of available magicons in order to power spells and so forth. Makes our world a much, much less dreary place than yours.“

Arwin grinned. "Punny, I was just thinking the same thing." He guffawed and slapped his knee at his own joke.

The skeleton would have rolled his eyes if he’d had any. He sighed instead. "You know, puns are more like an unfortunate side effect of the magic. It's really considered bad taste in some circles to go about throwing more than necessary into a conversation."

Arwin sobered and replied with mock seriousness. "Well, I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me. Being handed such advice from a handsome skeleton like yourself is really handy. You seem like a dab hand and I don't want to force your hand or make you get your hands dirty, but you are hands down the only person I know here. If you'd care to help me out I think I'd be in safe hands if you could further give me a guiding hand." Arwin snickered, then couldn't help himself and doubled over in laughter at his own awesome humour.

The skeleton remained silent for a long moment and his eye sockets bored into the human until the laughter dried up and Arwin stood straight once more. The skeleton shook his head. "You don't have many friends, do you?"

Arwin opened his mouth to reply, but had nothing to say to that. His shoulders slumped as he remembered his recent bad luck with friends back home. "No. No I don't."